Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is ending his presidential campaign Wednesday after a turbulent primary with more than 25 major candidates in the race at one point. Ultimately, former Vice President Joe Biden ended up as the presumptive nominee after all.

“Together we have transformed the American consciousness as to what kind of nation we can become,” Sanders said on a livestream from his home in Burlington, Vermont.

Today I am suspending my campaign. But while the campaign ends, the struggle for justice continues on. https://t.co/MYc7kt2b16

Sanders is leaving the race after capturing first place in only one out of the last nine state contests where Biden swept. Even as more than a dozen states postponed their elections over the Wuhan coronavirus, Wisconsin still held its primary on Tuesday, though results will not be reported until April 13. Polling conducted in the midwestern battleground showed Biden up by 28 points.

As of Wednesday morning, Biden had built a nearly insurmountable lead in the delegate count 1,217 to 914 against Sanders in the race to 1,991 needed to capture the nomination.

Just two month ago, Sanders led the field eclipsing Biden as the Democratic frontrunner with three straight wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, only for Biden to re-emerge as the party’s likely nominee with a game-changing victory in South Carolina. Biden’s southern revival was followed by a mass “moderate” coalescing around the former vice president in the 72 hours after leading into the Super Tuesday contests on March 3. The race narrowed down the Bernie vs. Biden as the rest of the field dropped out, prompted by poor performances in the nationwide primaries.

Sanders’ exit now leaves Biden as the presumptive nominee in the absence of major competitors on the road to the party’s coronation in Milwaukee this summer. The end of the progressive senator’s campaign marks an end of the socialist’s presidential ambitions and a rejection to the radical socialist platform promoted by Sanders and the rest of the progressive field, which pulled the party further to the left than any Democratic primary in recent history.

Tristan Justice is a staff writer at The Federalist focusing on the 2020 presidential campaigns. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan
or contact him at [email protected]